Why Your Marketing Campaign Failed

Whether you have a broader digital marketing campaign that does not seem to be achieving lift-off, or you are battling to see results in an old campaign, there are a number of reasons that your efforts may be failing.

Many businesses assume that achieving success with any type of campaign should be easy with enough effort, whether it is mobile, email, digital, lead generation, SEM, social or ecommerce marketing. In most cases however, the success of any given marketing campaign often comes down to strategy rather than hard work.

Top Reasons for Marketing Campaign Failure

Why do so many campaigns end up fizzling rather than exploding? For starters, it may be due to one of these major marketing campaign fails…

You are trying to be everything to everyone. One of the biggest mistakes for any type of campaign is failing to segment and target your audience. Trying to appeal to everyone often ends up having the opposite effect. Instead of driving traffic and growing your reach, you end up reducing your reach, because your message is too generic and too vague. When you have a clearly defined audience of people who are more likely to turn into purchasing customers, your campaign will be far more likely to resonate with the very person you are hoping to reach.

You are putting all your eggs in one basket. It is also never a good idea to focus all your efforts and marketing spend on one channel. You may be seeing some good returns on social media marketing, but if you focus exclusively on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, you may lose out potential results from email marketing or mobile marketing for example. Likewise, if you are putting all your hope onto SEO, which has a long term growth, you may be missing out on the chance to reach people more quickly through SEM. An integrated campaign will help you reach people on various platforms – social, mobile, email, search, and advertising.

You do not have clearly defined goals. Finally, another common reason for campaign stagnation or outright failure is not having clearly defined, easy to measure goals. If you are wasting your marketing budget and ‘winging’ it, you will likely not see results. If, on the other hand, you have a clear goal – new followers, new leads, customer retention, increased clicks, more sales or even an enhanced brand reputation – you will be able to plan and execute your campaign effectively.

Ultimately, strategy is what makes all the difference between a successful campaign and one that is wasting time, effort and money. Once you have a clear goal, a strategy that incorporates a selection of high performing channels and a clearly defined audience, you will find that your marketing campaign is far less likely to fail.